Derek’s grandfather served on the Western Front in 1918 toward the end of World War One. He had just turned 18 and was one of the few survivors of his battalion. He went to hospital firstly by being wounded in his hands, and then succumbing to dysentery.
Two of my mother’s father’s uncles and three of my father’s uncles served in the Western Front. Only one of the five returned.
Over four days, we followed the Australian Remembrance Trail along the Western Front, staying in Ypres, Doignies, and Villers Bretonneux.
Towns on the front lines in France and Belgium suffered greatly. Armies of both sides lived among the people. When the German armies retreated to form a shorter line across the front, with more defensible concrete bunkers, they burned everything in the towns in their wake, taking boys of the towns as young as 14 as prisoners of war. Many of their own soldiers were conscripts of this age.
Australia had the only major army in the war comprised of volunteers. As the war drew on, this war of attrition was losing men. Conscription was voted on twice in Australia via referendum and rejected. The fortunate soldiers were coming home, and some sense of the carnage was making its way into the Australian consciousness, despite the public relations spin of their governments.
Over 46,000 Australians died on the Western Front, many buried where they fell. In total, over 10,000,000 soldiers and 7,000,000 civilians died. Most Germans believed they were fighting a defensive war and in Germany, there were over 700,000 deaths from starvation.
With a fuller knowledge of the politics and leadership behind this horrific carnage, I now have more understanding of the British and French policy of appeasement which allowed the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.
